When Allbright Communications bought the website Capital New York on Sept. 3, there were several questions floating around but mainly, there was doubt.

Allbright owns Politico, one of the powerhouses for political news in Washington D.C. Politico has come a long way since its inception in 2007 and grabs the attention of roughly 5 million Americans every month. It also publishes a newspaper four days a week that is free to pick up and brings in a good percentage of its revenue through advertisements. According to BusinessWeek, “the ads that appear in Politico come in two flavors: issue-advocacy advertising, in which a group attempts to influence a specific bit of pending legislation; and corporate image advertising, in which a company tries to burnish its own reputation in Washington.”

Politico took on the project in order to revamp the site to be focused on New York City and State politics and media coverage, rather than hyperlocal reporting. It’s part of a larger mission to “colonize” and cover politics in large markets. If all goes well in New York, Politico is looking to further broaden its horizons. Continue reading →

Journalism summer internships aren’t very difficult to come by if you don’t know what you’re looking for. But if you’re lucky like me and have mentors left and right, it’s a really stressful process. Everyone wants to help but ends up pointing you in a different direction. This past Thursday I applied for an internship I had stumbled upon a week before. Here are five things I thought every journalism student should consider if they ever find themselves in my shoes.

Start early. The whole “I do my best work under pressure” b.s. is just that. Bullshit. If you really want an internship, start looking in the summer and continue to do so during the semester. Make an Excel spreadsheet (lots of internships want people who can use it!) to keep track of what you’ve already applied for and what you’ll get in return (school credit or cash?). Have your resume and clips ready. If you don’t know how to write a cover letter (like me), ask for help. If you don’t have clips, write good stuff and get it published. Pick up the phone and call the internship coordinators or the human resources departments if the information isn’t already online. Sometimes they’ll hang up on you, sometimes they’ll be rude but if you want to be a journalist, you’re going to have to get used to it.

The beautiful thing about soccer bloggers is that they have to understand not just the sport, but the country in which it is being played. With that comes a deeper understanding of culture and racism, among other things.

So as I was perusing Twitter tonight, I found that a few of my favorite writers were outraged about an article about the band, Arcade Fire, on The Atlantic‘s website.

Hayden Higgins, the author of the story titled “Arcade Fire Exploited Haiti, and Almost No One Noticed,” made several statements in his piece claiming that the band used Caribbean-sounding music and Haitian costumes to get people to buy their new album, “Reflektor.” He also said that even though their intentions were sincere, there music has perpetuated stereotypes.

What? What?

First of all, there are ZERO examples that the music has caused people to view Haiti solely in the way that the band has “portrayed” the island nation. Not one quote from a listener, a fan, an ignorant American, no one. When you’re going to make such a bold statement about a band like that, you better be able to back it up.

On Thursday, Toronto’s daily newspaper, The Toronto Star, published a new, never-before-seen video of the city’s mayor in an inebriated state.

According to Poynter, The Star paid a source $5,000 for the video. The source claimed to have filmed it from another person’s computer. The videos shows Mayor Rob Ford, in a visibly intoxicated state, pacing around a room and yelling, threatening to commit “first degree murder.” The story adds a new facet to Ford’s history of substance use nearly six months after Gawker started a $200,000 “Crackstarter” (don’t bother holding your laughter, I didn’t) to buy and publish a different video of the mayor supposedly smoking crack cocaine.

The Toronto newspaper originally refused to disclose the video’s price when it initially posted the story to its website just after noon. Poynter spoke to one of the reporters who wrote the story, Kevin Donovan, who said “we are not disclosing the amount but it is not a lot.”

New Jersey’s largest daily newspaper, The Star Ledger, narrowly escaped ceasing production this past week by coming to a tentative agreement with its production unions.

NJ.com reported that after two weeks of fierce and heated discussion, The Newhouse family, which owns The Star-Ledger, and the union negotiators were able to come to an agreement, but neither side got exactly what they wanted.

Upon entering The New Republic’s website today, I was greeted by the top story featuring a beautiful portrait of the Irani president, Hassan Rouhani.

But underneath the top story are several categories, ranging from public health to TV. However, the first category is one labeled “sponsored content“.

There are several names floating around the internet for this kind of marketing (like “branded content”) but the concept, no matter what you call it, is the same: advertisers are developing advertisements to look like news articles to lure in viewers.

A new tablet application called “Reading Radar”, which is set to debut by the end of 2013, will provide news consumers with relevant background context when reading about complex or complicated issues in today’s world.

Jan Bierhoff, who has been working on the project in The Netherlands, told Journalism.co.uk that there is “an enormous amount of information about virtually any subject or theme,” on the internet and that he “hopes to come to the rescue of those who find themselves drowning in information.”

“Journalistic coverage of a number of themes is dwindling,” Bierhoff said, and hopes that his app will highlight and better explain “the complicated backgrounds of current affairs.”